A Spirit of Nowhere

 

Towering rows of beige siding melts

In the haze of a plastic twilight

To recede past sight and blend with the horizon,

While miles of painted on concrete drips

Into a forever dilating

Maze of streets and thoroughfares

So vast they eclipse the sight and knowledge

Of human affairs or planning committees.

And here is the boy who clamours and shakes

To disembodied voices in the night,

Pacing endlessly through the confines of

An imperceptible part of nowhere.

Allured by the song of the fading day -

Sung by the spirits who haunt the streetlights,

The resonance amplified by the stale air

And the hollow sound of parking lots

- He steps into the sea of asphalt

Slowly receding from the shore of lawns

To be carried away in hopes to find

Something to feel neither plastic nor hollow,

Searching for the creatures who roam these streets

Felt by all but only seen by few;

Dwellers of vacant lots and the starless heaven,

Through the spaces in the trees and darkened clouds;

Their strange essence permeates the night

And is sensed through the windows of the van

That flies through these LED borderlands,

With the boy in the back soaked in delirium,

Bathed in the light that filters through the glass

Streaming flash upon flash along the skyline

Merging with the sour smoke in the air

Burning the lungs and fermenting the mind;

Riding it through the backstreets and looping freeways:

The joy of wind and of flying colours so bright.

Until the lines again grow stark and still,

When sudden to the sight, the white flash of a girl,

Her paper limbs at her sides unfolding,

Gaze transfixed to nothing as if possessed,

Each step along the centre line unhesitating,

And her eyes alight with the headlights reflecting.

A narrow miss and lurch of the vehicle

To cause the expulsion of the boy's poisoned abdomen,

his mind cleared of all but the vision:

Her pale face burning behind his fevered eyes.

Alone now amidst the hum of florescent lights

And the acid smell of styrofoam coffee,

("Six taquitos please") the illusion flowers here

Between space and time: the blinding 4am lights.

Again spat forth into the depth of the sprawl

To return to the glaring eyes that seized him,

Their power more true than the spaces surrounding,

Blazing out somewhere in the abyss of the city.